Goldberg Takes Down Hollywood Hulk Hogan

For this issue of Huge Crowd Reactions in Wrestling, we’re going to look at the massive reaction Bill Goldberg received when he defeated the dastardly “Hollywood” Hulk Hogan in the Georgia Dome on July 6th, 1998, during Monday Nitro.

Welcome back to “Huge Crowd Reactions in Wrestling.” This series is basically an excuse for us here at Pro Wrestling Stories to revel in some of the moments that made us lose our minds. I mean, we’re all pretty huge wrestling fans. We live for those huge crowd reactions. Even as at-home viewers, those are the moments we crave. We want to be on the edge of our seats, or even out of them entirely.

We simply cannot deny the noise made that night. It holds the record for the largest WCW crowd with 41,412 tickets sold with almost a million dollar gate (30,000 of those came before the announcement of Goldberg versus Hollywood). I mean, just look at that crowd!

In typical WCW fashion, the funniest thing about this Nitro was that the announced attendance was lower than the actual attendance. They announced 39 thousand-something but the actual attendance was 41,412.

With very little build, WCW decided to capitalize on the popularity of Goldberg.

Goldberg was then 106-0, having just beat NWO’s Scott Hall earlier that hour. WCW would take the biggest money-making match they would ever have and give it away for free on TV just to beat Raw in the ratings for a week. At this point, Raw was finally starting to take an edge in the Monday Night Wars with the incredibly hot Austin/McMahon feud. I remember being hyped to see this happen. I was 8. I actually turned off WWF so I could see the Goldberg match. I was not disappointed.

Hollywood and the NWO almost always won. Show after show, the bad guys stood tall. Not on that night in Georgia, though. Even after Hogan connected on Goldberg with not one, not two, but three leg drops.

On that night, the bad guys were put down, and Da Man and The Myth, Bill Goldberg walked away with that big gold belt.

Joey Finnegan is a writer and filmmaker for Nerdopotamus.net as well as a regular contributor for ProWrestlingStories.com. He can be reached on Twitter @JFinnegan45.